It’s … The Encyclopedia of American loons! Our new and exciting series presenting a representative sample of American loons from A-Z.

Monday, February 8, 2016

#1590: Willis Eschenbach

Willis Eschenbach is a climate change denialist kookblogging at Watts Up With That (WUWT), and cited by Steve McIntyre’s
Climate Audit. Eschenbach has a BA in psychology and a California Massage
Certificate from Aames School of Massage, and he has experience as a
construction manager. Now, climate change denialism comes in various versions;
Eschenbach’s view is apparently that “the preponderance of
evidence shows that humans are the main cause of the increase in atmospheric CO2 … I don’t think that the change in CO2
will make any meaningful difference to the temperature” (more here).
A good discussion of his criticism of the BEST project can be found here.
As you may remember, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project was a
project funded by private groups (including the Koch brothers) to provide an
independent evaluation of the data and even included known climate change
skeptics on the team – turns out that their findings were in line with
mainstream research, which caused some, uh, consternation among the denialists.
And here is a discussion of Eschenbach’s claims to the effect that Greenland has only
lost a fraction of its total ice mass and that it’s nothing to worry about.
Here is a discussion of his own (unpublished except for on denialist blogs)
hypothesis about global warming; needless to say, it’s not going to be included
in the IPCC reports, and that’s not beause there’s a conspiracy (other than a
rather official one of keeping pseudoscientific rubbish by delusional kooks
out, if that counts).

How much of a crank is he? Unsurprisingly, Eschenbach is not above lying.
And then there is this (do check that one out). And here is a discussion of his letter to the Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine lamenting the fact that they let science and
evidence guide their coverage of climate change: “The problem is that you are extremely well educated, strong, strikingly
good looking, and a wickedly-smart woman by all accounts … and while those are
all good things, that’s a scary combination. One downside of that particular
melange is that as a result, it’s very possible that people, particularly men,
haven’t told you the unvarnished truth in years.” Wheee.

Diagnosis: That this guy has become something of a celebrity
in the denialist movement should tell you quite a bit about the movement. (And
him.)